The present invention relates generally to a bulk loader for storing and conveying stick-like articles, which includes a hopper associated with a conveyor for moving articles from the hopper to a delivery point. More particularly, the present invention relates to a railroad right of way maintenance device providing a bulk spike loader system for providing railroad articles, such as spikes, from a hopper to a desired location for loading the articles into a spiker.
Among various types of railway maintenance equipment, automatic spikers are known and used for driving railroad spikes into railroad ties for securing the rail to the tie plates and tie plates to the ties. The spiker is typically mounted on a spiking machine capable of traveling over railroad tracks and may be self propelled or towable. Suitable examples of such spikers are disclosed in commonly owned U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,191,840 and 6,095,053 which are incorporated by reference. During operation of typical spikers, workers fill kegs with spikes held in a separate car or wagon, and load the filled kegs onto the spiking machine. A first worker then removes spikes from the keg, as needed, and places them in the spiker magazine. A second worker then operates the aiming and driving mechanism of the spiker to drive the spike where desired.
This conventional system requires a large amount of manual labor to load the kegs with spikes and then load the kegs onto the spiking machine. In addition, manually reaching into the kegs to get the spikes wastes further time. Furthermore, space is limited on the spiking machine, so that only a few kegs can be carried on the spiking machine at one time. This limits the production capacity of the spiking machine.
Some known solutions to the above problems such as those disclosed in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 6,095,053, which is incorporated by reference, have proposed using an inclined trough and auger assembly to move spikes or other rail fasteners from the hopper to a desired location for facilitating rapid loading of the fasteners by an operator into the spiker. While such solutions have improved the feeding of railroad spikes being supplied to an operator, problems such as jamming of the auger and/or an insufficient supply of the spikes reaching an operator are known to occur and consequently cause lower operator productivity. That is, productivity is limited by the number of spikes fed to the operator. When the auger becomes jammed, the spikes must be removed from the hopper to have access to those spikes which are jamming the hopper. Once the jammed spikes are disengaged from the auger, a reloading of the spikes into the spiker must occur before the spikes are again provided to the operator.
Thus, it is desirable to provide an improved bulk loader that efficiently stores and conveys relatively large quantities of articles to a desired location for further operations and that prevents jamming of the conveyed articles while they are conveyed to the desired location.